Re: Content negotiation

> We have dozens of browsers in our "browser-negotiation" database.

<groan>

> Including items listing the features that we believe Microsoft's browser
> supports.  However until someone proposes a way to tell me via the headers
> that this browser supports '<p align=center>' and that this browser
> supports tables but not percentage widths, and this one supports tables
> within tables but not with forms in them; I'm going to have to keep doing
> browser-based presentation.

Why?  Most content providers seem to live in one of a couple of 
worlds.  Either they want their info to be viewable by a wide variety 
of people, or they want their info to be as cool as possible under 
one browser.  What is it about your world that makes it a hybrid of 
the two?

> What really gets me
> though is trying to figure out whether I need to send a RealAudio file, a
> WAV file, an AU file or an AIFF file.  Why the !@#$% aren't the major
> browser manufacturors sending that helper-application information?

Because no one wants to send 1K of Accept headers on every request.  
I'm not trying to defend the choice, but I think that's the !@#$% 
reason.  Why not just send an AU file every time?

Content negotiation via the User-Agent field is irresponsible.

Eric W. Sink
eric@spyglass.com         http://www.spyglass.com/~eric/

Received on Tuesday, 7 November 1995 12:14:19 UTC